It was a dire warning, delivered on the largest stage: Some 278,000 noncitizens had been improperly registered to vote in federal elections and had been poised to tilt the scales of the election in November, President Donald Trump warned in a primetime address to the nation in July.
“The true quantity is definitely a lot increased,” he added.
The president’s daring declare set off a sequence of occasions that culminated in current weeks with an unprecedented bid by the federal authorities to impose itself on state-run elections.
The Trump administration has sued the state of California and threatened different states over the problem of noncitizen voting, a longtime concern of the president and his administration regardless of consultants saying it’s already unlawful and “vanishingly rare.” Federal officers have demanded motion after presenting to states what they are saying are lists of noncitizens who’re registered to vote, gathered utilizing a mix of federal immigration information and commercially obtainable state voter registration rolls.
However within the remaining weeks of the marketing campaign, because the administration implores state and native officers, each out and in of court docket, to research these people, the lists — and the grandiose numbers Trump and his allies publicly trumpeted — seem like buckling below the scrutiny of state and native election officers.
In California, Washington and Nevada — and past — state and native officers say the lists supplied by the Justice Division seem grossly inaccurate and justify the states’ reluctance to purge people from registration lists so near the election.
‘Lack of credibility’
The Trump administration initially accused California of harboring over 190,000 noncitizen voters on its rolls over the summer time. That sum was whittled down to twenty,000 by the point the Justice Division filed its lawsuit towards the state final week.
It isn’t clear why the administration decreased the determine so dramatically. However even the smaller determine appears inflated, in response to state and native officers.
Folks vote at a polling location throughout early voting within the midterm election, in Atlanta, Georgia, October 13, 2026.
Erik S. Lesser/AFP by way of Getty Photographs
In court docket filings, officers in Los Angeles County mentioned a preliminary review of 200 people on the checklist confirmed that just about 40% “point out that they had been born in the USA, which is robust proof of citizenship; and 71.2% of the data haven’t any voting historical past.”
Decide David Carter, the federal choose assigned to the case, rejected the Justice Division’s push for an emergency intervention based mostly partially on what he known as the administration’s “unreliability” and “lack of credibility.”
Late final week, separate from its litigation towards the state, the DOJ despatched letters to each California county asking native elections officers to assist establish potential voters who could also be within the U.S. illegally, in response to a letter described to ABC Information.
“Inside 48 hours, we ask that you simply decide to working with DOJ and DHS to establish who on the accompanying checklist is a citizen and who shouldn’t be,” in response to the letter despatched by Justice Division officers.
Since then, county election officers have been sifting by way of the lists. Based on some county officers, the outcomes to date appear to substantiate their skepticism of the Trump administration’s claims.
In Butte County, located simply north of the Sacramento Valley, officers acquired a listing of 47 names from federal prosecutors late Friday. The county’s high election official, Keaton Denlay, informed ABC Information that he personally reviewed what he known as the Justice Division’s “poorly formatted excel spreadsheet with lacking and jumbled data.”
Denlay discovered that 32 of the 47 people “are usually not on Butte county’s lively voter rolls,” and one other seven “didn’t have adequate data for me to match to our voter checklist with confidence.”
Officers in Nevada County acquired a listing of simply 10 names. Their assessment “discovered no proof of non-citizen voting within the November 3, 2026 Election,” an official mentioned.
Of the 33 names despatched to officers in San Benito County, officers there mentioned, “a preliminary assessment … indicated that not all listed people had been at present registered to vote in San Benito County,” with out specifying what number of.
Different county officers contacted by ABC Information mentioned they had been both nonetheless reviewing the checklist or analyzing their authorized obligation to cooperate with the Justice Division.
A Justice Division official informed ABC Information that, as of Thursday, the DOJ below Trump had charged roughly 200 people throughout the nation with both unlawful voting or illegal voter registration-related offenses.
‘Tip of the iceberg’?
Federal prosecutors in Washington state convened the media on Monday for a press convention the place they accused state leaders of knowingly permitting some 400 noncitizens to vote this fall, calling that determine simply “the tip of the iceberg.”
The highest election official in Washington state issued a blistering response on Wednesday, claiming {that a} preliminary assessment of the Justice Division’s checklist discovered quite a few U.S. residents, in addition to “a number of” different people who are usually not registered to vote.
“The data you supplied accommodates a number of obtrusive deficiencies,” wrote Steve Hobbs, the Washington secretary of state in response the DOJ. “You present no details about how the knowledge was collected or what sources had been used. Nor do you present any backup documentation supporting your assertions.”
The doorway to the early voting location in Paulding County, Georgia.
Jared Kofsky/ABC Information
Hobbs mentioned this near an election, the chance of eradicating people from registration lists or sequestering their ballots would threat disenfranchising eligible voters, a sentiment shared by election officers across the nation and the choose overseeing the Justice Division’s case in California.
“It’s virtually sure extra folks named on this checklist are additionally United States residents; these already recognized could be the ‘tip of the iceberg’ of people that might be wrongfully disenfranchised by the actions you request,” Hobbs informed the DOJ.
‘There isn’t a belief’
In August, federal officers alerted Nevada state leaders, together with Nevada Secretary of State Francisco Aguilar, that there may very well be as many as 15,903 noncitizens registered to vote within the state. The 2 events met on a video convention to debate the determine.
Based on a recording of the video convention obtained by ABC Information, the assembly was not overtly hostile — however there gave the impression to be palpable tension and a few awkward exchanges, as Nevada officers appeared deeply skeptical of the claims made by Division of Homeland Safety officers.
“So what you are saying is the 15,000 quantity has not been vetted?” a Nevada official requested, in response to the recording.
“I in all probability would not use the sentence, ‘It hasn’t been vetted,'” a DHS consultant responded, including that every particular person has not “had a full handbook assessment.”
“So it went from 16,000, after which to the 185, after which right down to zero from our perspective,” Aguilar mentioned.
“There is no belief in that relationship,” Aguilar later informed ABC Information. “In an effort to have a working relationship, there needs to be belief, and the truth that they proceed to tear that belief aside and unfold the misinformation and the lies that they’re about our elections is incorrect.”
In response to a request by ABC Information for remark earlier this month, DHS stood by its work, which it known as “a service to Nevada’s residents,” and accused Nevada officers of knowingly harboring unlawful voters on its lists.
“Nevada is aware of the 185 names they preserve waving round had been by no means the complete checklist of unlawful voters,” a Homeland Safety spokesperson mentioned in an e mail. “They had been solely the recordsdata [that immigration officials] had completed reviewing for the time being of the decision. Since then, [immigration officials] have manually confirmed about 2,000 extra aliens from the identical checklist.”
They concluded: “The assessment is simply starting.”
